


Getaway

by Wintaer



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-17 04:17:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4651962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wintaer/pseuds/Wintaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their skirmishes weren't battles of power but rather one continuous game of manipulation. They pushed and pulled at each other, fighting for control, forcing the other into exposing more of his or her true self, a self they hid from the world. UnoUra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Encounters

When he first approached her, it was out of pure curiosity. The first kenpachi, yet to be defeated, the one who put the eleventh division’s method of picking a captain into place, danger carefully hidden behind a calm, kind facade - what was she really like? He itched to find out. Books and history lessons could only teach a man so much, and he was someone who preferred finding things out first hand.

It was much more fun that way.

Yoruichi had repeatedly warned him to keep his curiosity in check and stay away. There was, after all, an unspoken rule in Soul Society that one did not bring up Unohana Retsu’s past, but they had both known it was a lost cause the moment he voiced his interest. His curiosity was boundless, and if anyone had an uncanny ability to break the rules, it was Urahara Kisuke. Eventually, she had thrown her hands up in exasperation as she declared him an idiot with a death wish and left him with the promise to kill him if the other captain did not.

He followed Unohana on one of her ‘hikes’, not bothering to hide his reiatsu as he flashed stepped through the trees, moving in the shadow of her zanpakutou, the black cloth of his Onmitsukidō uniform blending into his surroundings before he stepped out into the clearing she landed in. Their distance from any other soul told him that she knew what he came for, and the grin on his face as he pulled down the cloth that covered his face told her that he was perfectly aware of the fact that he was far out of her league.

Yet here they both were.

In the end, neither of them really knew why she decided to indulge him. Perhaps she instinctively sensed the young man’s potential and thought him worth testing, or she was simply intrigued by the novelty of his sheer determination. Whatever the reason, sealed blades rang against each other, and on that first sunny afternoon, she had him disarmed and flat on the ground with the tip of her sword at his throat within two minutes - an entire minute longer than either of them had expected. Looking up at her silhouetted against the blue sky, with her zanpakutou threatening to cut into his skin and her reiatsu pinning him to the dirt, Urahara gasped for breath before letting out a breathless, exhilarated laugh, grey eyes shining with delight. It was that laugh, and the extra minute, that brought her back the second afternoon.

And the third… the fourth… fifth… until numbers no longer mattered. Days, weeks, sometimes even months, would pass between each meeting. No words were ever exchanged between the two of them, yet they still somehow managed to find each other in that clearing on certain afternoons - a particularly trying morning in the Fourth Division where the air was filled with the scent of blood, an especially challenging mission that left him both drained and restless, a too silent and unoccupied day of unbearable stillness. It was during one of these encounters that he stored away the memory of her pushing off the vertical face of a boulder, filing it away as a trick to use at a later date.

They both toed a fine line as the years passed. He pushed at her boundaries, tested her control and dared her to crush him even as he challenged himself by borrowing her strength. She sought to overcome his stubbornness without breaking him, balancing desire against principle, keeping a firm grip on her power though it sometimes slipped away from her. He would never escape without various injuries while she always left as unruffled as she arrived.

No matter how serious the wounds were, he never asked her to heal them, and she never offered.

It meant that he had an excuse to keep the dagger she buried in his shoulder the first time he managed to force her into using them by surprising her with a modified kidou spell he had come up with two weeks before. The blade had glinted in the setting sun as he whirled around with a hiss of pain, only to have the hilt of her sword driven straight into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him as he fell back onto the blood-speckled ground. Still, she hadn’t missed the triumphant look on his face as she left, and he hadn’t failed to notice the brief, eager spike of her reiatsu right before she reined it in and ended the fight.

He considered it one of his wins.

Their skirmishes weren’t battles of power but rather one continuous game of manipulation. They pushed and pulled at each other, fighting for control, forcing the other into exposing more of his or her true self, a self they hid from the world with smiles of varying sincerity and eyes that were careful to never show too much. She stood apart from everyone else because of her strength, and he because of his mind. In a way, they were both a little inhuman - vaguely animalistic, faintly machine-like - yet perhaps that was why they understood each other. As their swords screeched against each other and sent sparks into the air, they clawed away at the other’s loneliness, tearing down the walls little by little, silently sharing wordless secrets that each had hidden away long ago so that they could appear normal.

They were each other’s getaway, and so they lost themselves in one another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** This fic was inspired by the song 'Animal' by The Cabs. The two of them just seem really compatible personality-wise, and the type to have a push-pull relationship. Not to mention, Urahara is totally one of the few people who would dare challenge Unohana. This may or may not turn into a collection of drabbles (or even a multi-chapter fic!) depending on whether or not more plot bunnies pop into my brain.
> 
> Let me know what you guys think!


	2. You Make Me Feel

He always greeted her with a polite smile and bow whenever their paths crossed in Seireitei proper. Gone was the galling gaze and insolent little grin. Instead, he was the very picture of decorum and respect as he quietly murmured her title with eyes averted towards the ground. In return, she would offer him a nod and smile of acknowledgement as she passed, the tips of her fingers prickling with the desire to rip that mild and obedient expression off his face. Their exchanges usually lasted no longer than a few seconds, leaving both their reiryoku on pins and needles, yet everyone else around them was none the wiser.

She knew his name now, made it a point to track his reiatsu down when it became clear that he wasn't about to leave her alone in the first few months of… whatever this was. Urahara Kisuke, best friend to Shihouin Yoruichi and her true second-in-command if rumors were to be believed. No one seemed quite sure why the captain of the second division put so much faith in a mophead like him, but Unohana wasn't fooled. Those wide eyes and embarrassed grins made up the new mask he'd chosen to adopt now that he had come out from the shadows of the Covert Ops. She knew he wasn't the simple third seat he'd have everyone believe, but to her, he was nothing more than a passing diversion, something with which to pass the time and ease the boredom as she waited for her real opponent to come find her again. It was a fact she knew _he_ knew, but that didn't stop him - had never seemed to have the power to stop him.

Some would call him crazy, but the two of them knew better.

His exhilaration in the face of sheer impossibility sent shivers down her back, and she often found herself aborting a sudden spasm of the arm which could have taken his head. His sheer stubbornness drew her in, and his creativity excited her in ways she thought she had long since chained on that rainy evening in the outskirts of Rukongai. It made her thirst for something she knew she could only hope for, and as much as she tried to resist it, those unwavering grey eyes thrilled her to the core. His gaze was never defeated, always eager, always challenging. She knew he could feel her desire to crush his impudence in the violent weight of her reiatsu, and it frustrated her to no end that he had been able to make her lose control of it more and more frequently over the years.

But it was impossible to ignore him when he laughed and all the brilliant honesty of his soul shone through.

In those moments, she realized that he'd won, and that she didn't mind he had somehow managed to make her cede control. She had no doubt that given a few decades more, he would become a formidable opponent, even for her. His potential for growth was hard for her to gauge accurately, but she knew that his true strength laid in that mind of his. He was able to take attacks she had thrown at him and mold them into his own. Her tricks with kidou and knives were slowly becoming ineffectual on him, forcing her to rely on more raw power and reiatsu that she had ever thought to use against any mere member of the Gotei 13. Those eyes of his were always watching her from under that mop of hair, eyes that catalogued, calculated and dissected her every move and reaction. It was unnerving and irritating, and drove her crazy in all the right ways.

So they were back here again today, swords and bodies crashing against each other as they each sought to tear away the other's mask.

The press of his palm against her back was electric, not only because of the hadou spell that wracked her body, but because it had been so long since anyone had dared to touch her like this. Not even the most foolhardy or bloodthirsty of the kenpachi had tried once pinned under her smile, and to be honest, not many others had the skill or inclination. He was the only one who'd been brave enough, skilled enough and _stupid_ enough to break that unspoken rule. Idly, she noted that this was another new spell he'd cooked up, that he was studying its effects even as he brought his zanpakutou down to hammer against Minazuki. It wasn't the first time he'd subjected her to his various inventions, and while some part of her was angry that he was using her as a guinea pig, she couldn't help but be impressed by his intelligence and innovation.

But it wouldn't do to let him get too cocky.

A stinging retort of her reiatsu drove him back, and the gleaming bite of her nodachi delivered a harsh reprimand as his blood splattered onto the dirt beneath their feet. He was unfazed, one hand pressed against the wound and already glowing with healing kidou even as he charged in, weaving between the flashing jabs of her swordpoint like a silent shadow. Sharp flicks of his wrist pinned her sleeve against the tree behind her with well-placed kunai - a first, but he wasn't someone who could be satisfied with only accomplishing that much. There was no hesitation as his blade swung straight towards her throat, and in that moment, Yachiru surfaced to cut him down.

Triumphant laughter, mixed with blood, gurgled its way up past his lips before he crumpled to the ground at her feet.

By all rights, she was the winner of today's little skirmish, and yet she didn't feel victorious. She stood there, breathing hard, feeling raw and exposed as she stared down at the head of unruly blonde hair. It had been a long time since anyone had been able to snake under her calm demeanor like he had just done. He may not be cut from the same cloth as her and the boy from Rukongai, but he certainly proved that he knew how to make her blood boil with that old desire for unchecked violence. It was… a little intoxicating.

She healed him for the first time that hot summer afternoon. As the cicada started up their song again, grey eyes fluttered open, found hers and gleamed with promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** Right... so about a year after posting this (or 3 years since I first wrote this drabble), I finally get around to tapping out a second chapter to this little plot bunny. Mainly because "Moves Like Jagger" came on the radio and gave me feels. Decided to write this one from Unohana's point of view and kind of delve a little more into this tension and dance the two of them have going on. Hopefully this chapter continued that undercurrent of push/pull from the first chapter while also showing the progression of time in the storyline.
> 
> Let me know what you guys think!


End file.
